As Atlas came barreling towards him, Avery chose to face his opponent and close the distance himself.

No matter the outcome, he planned on facing this fight head on.

'Those laser blasters really are annoying.' Avery thought as he jerked the Dauntless' controls around and used the ship's maneuvering and attitude adjustment thrusters to zigzag around the spray of lasers coming his way.

He could not avoid every hit since there were simply too many blasts coming his way, but he made sure to return fire with his laser cannons.

While he lacked the sheer volume of shots that Atlas could fire, his weapons made up for this with high firepower.

Once the two of them had gotten a bit closer to each other, Atlas began firing seeker missiles and Avery powered up his plasma launcher and fired them at their maximum rate.

Neither of them truly expected these attacks to hit. They were merely a means to control each other's movements.

'Just like I thought, he's not going to let me get close enough to hit him with my stronger attacks. And in a fight like this, he'll eventually win due to his stronger shields and armor.'

Still, Avery did not show any sign of being disheartened.

He knew that this was how things were going to go.

Against a less skilled opponent, he would be able to maneuver around and get close without too much trouble considering the Dauntless' speed, but Atlas was not just any mercenary.

He was currently one of the best, and he knew exactly what Avery wanted to do.

His ship may have been on the slower side, that was for certain. Nevertheless, Atlas was a veteran mercenary of thousands of battles.

The skills that he had cultivated over a long career as a mercenary gave him the ability to properly analyze his opponent and near perfectly control his vessel.

"We're probably about to take some heavy damage, and I don't think the inertial dampeners are going to be able to handle what I'm going to need to do in order to get closer." Avery said, warning Kasandra.

If he continued to play things normally, Atlas was just going to keep reading him.

Avery needed to get a bit reckless if he wanted to create an opening to deliver a decisive attack.

Practically giving up any semblance of trying to dodge the barrage of lasers being fired by Atlas' laser blasters, Avery pushed the thrusters to their maximum output and charged ahead.

'I don't think I've seen the Dauntless' shields depleting this fast since the time we got engulfed by that queen energy lifeform.'

Despite leaving monitoring shield strength to Kasandra, Avery could not help and glance at it a couple of times as he closed the distance between him and Atlas.

At this point he was basically taking the brunt of four laser blasters' concentrated fire. The only attacks he was actually dodging or interpreting were the seeker missiles being rapidly launched. Those held a bit too much power behind them to just ignore.

By the time Avery had finally managed to get closer to Atlas' vessel, Kasandra had already used two of their shield cells, and their current capacity had just dropped under thirty percent.

Fortunately, Atlas had been unable to keep at the range that he wanted in the face of Avery's near suicidal charge.

Now that he was basically right on top of his opponent, Avery fired off his plasma launchers with the intent of eliminating his foe.

Balls of glowing plasma descended upon Atlas's ship, and there was hardly any time for him to dodge.

Nevertheless, he had been prepared for the possibility that Avery would get in close like this and had already come up with some counter strategies.

Pulling off crazy maneuvers that were no less difficult than what Avery had been doing, he used his vessel's thrusters to twist around swiftly, and at the same time fired off two missiles directly towards the first burst of plasma Avery had fired.

Being in as close quarters as they were, Atlas got caught up in the explosion of his own missiles, but they did serve to disperse the plasma and push him away from Avery.

"I got him." Avery said with a smirk on his face as he pulled the trigger on a certain weapon.

In the chaos of the explosion, he had made it seem like the Dauntless had gotten turned around, but in actually this was how he wanted things to ultimately play out.

He was a bit surprised by Atlas' willingness to use missiles and essentially blow himself up, but this was not the first time Avery had seen a similar technique, so it did not catch him completely off guard.

With the stern of his ship now facing Atlas' vessel, Avery fired off both of his scatterguns.

So far, he had only used them once during the competition, and that was during the opening ceremony to launch some specialized fireworks.

Otherwise, the opportunity had not really presented itself to use them.

Naturally, this meant that Atlas was far less wary of the Dauntless' scatterguns, especially when it's plasma launchers presented a far greater threat, and Avery had already demonstrated how adept he was at using them.

However, at incredibly close range, scattergun projectiles were quite powerful.

When the two projectiles just about reached Atlas' ship, they burst apart and showered it in explosive projectiles that rapidly saturated the vessel's shields.

Had Atlas not just used a shield cell to refresh his defenses just moments prior, his shields would have been breached and the armor plating around his craft would have been heavily damaged.

'I didn't think that would be enough to take you down anyway. So, I'm not letting you get away.'

After taking the first attack, Atlas had aimed all of his weapon system at Avery and fired with abandon while trying to escape.

This was probably the only chance he was going to get though, so Avery pursued without letting his target get too far away.

"Did he really think that would work. We've already seen that trick before." Avery muttered, engaging pressing the button that engaged the Dauntless' auto turret.

Near imperceptible black spheres had started pouring out of Atlas' ship, but now that he knew what they were, Avery had asked Kasandra to specifically monitor for their appearance.

Along with having the sensors ready, the auto turret had also been programed to prioritize targeting these micro mines that Atlas had aboard his ship.

"He's really letting me lay into him."

Avery had his three laser cannons and two plasma launchers firing at full blast.

To avoid getting hit by any of the balls of plasma aimed at him, Atlas was pretty much forced to take the brunt of Avery's laser cannons.

Of course, Avery was in a similar position, soaking up far too much fire from Atlas' laser blasters while prioritizing defending against incoming missiles.

"Looks like he's finally out."

At some point, the missiles stopped coming and all Atlas had left to fight with were his laser blasters.

This was great news for Avery as his shields had taken far too much of a beating.

Kasandra had already used the ship's last shield cell and they were below fifty percent capacity now.

It seemed that Avery was going to win now that he had exhausted his opponent's limited supply of missiles.

Yet, Atlas was not willing to go down so easily.

Instead of continuing to try and create some distance, he turned around and aimed to crash into the Dauntless.

With their shields at about the same level of power now, Atlas was confident that his heavier armor would see him coming out of a collision on top.

For a moment, his first battle in the Dauntless flashed before his eyes again.

Back then, he hardly knew how to fight at all.

He had made more mistakes than he could count, and despite having the far superior craft, one of the pirates he had been fighting managed to land a successful suicide charge against him.

'I'm a lot better than I was back then though.'

This was not Avery first time dealing with someone trying to use this last desperate measure on him since he had become a mercenary, and since it was the first major mistake he had ever made, he had practiced similar scenarios hundreds of times on a simulator.

Avery realized nearly immediately that he was not going to be able to shake Atlas off.

Normally he could just turn around and fly away since his vessel was the faster of the two, but his shields were getting low, and his opponent had not ceased firing.

Should he try to turn around and make some distance to avoid colliding, it would just see his shields getting deleted and leaving Atlas in a more advantageous position.

His only real option was to meet the charge head on and use his skills to outmaneuver his adversary.

"Avery!" Kasandra shouted in panic when she realized what he was planning on doing.

They may have been fighting hard, but this was not a life of death battle.

Currently, they were participating in an event within a competition.

All of their attacks had been suing training rounds, and the damage was merely being calculated by a program installed on all of the competitor's ships.

However, an actual crash between two vessels would not just end with simulated damage. The possibility of both ships ending up heavily damaged or even destroyed was a real possibility.

"Don't worry, I've got this." Avery said, just a couple seconds before the two vessels reached each other.